


The Last Jedi (00Q version)

by Only_1_Truth



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, I literally dumped James Bond characters into a bastardized Star Wars setting, Jedi!Q, M/M, MI6 is still a spy organization, Not Canon Compliant, Q is new at this Jedi business for forgive him, Star Wars!au, Stormtrooper!Bond, purist First Order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2018-12-29 16:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Only_1_Truth/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: In a universe where the First Order is systematically wiping out Jedi, there's not a lot of hope for resistance.That is, until a certain rebellious Stormtrooper happens to stumble across an injured, snarky, slightly-undertrained Jedi...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll say firstly that if you're a Star Wars buff _look away_. There is very little Star Wars canon in this fic, and I'm mostly just using it as my plaything *bats it around like a particularly fun ball of yarn* I'm a James Bond fandom native, and therefore cannot be held accountable for the terrible injuries I do to this 'verse. 
> 
> ...I blame it all on the fact that Q makes a pretty cute Jedi
> 
> Also: WARNING BEFORE READING:  
>  **This fic will be updated sporadically.** I started posting this for friends, but wanted to share it more broadly, but I _am_ in school right now, and teaching, and my other fics are suffering, too. So please don't ask for speedy updates. I can only post when I can.

The First Order was an elitist group, obsessed not only with wiping out the Jedi but also with racial purity - a tricky proposition when there was such a wide universe of species to contend with.  Sometimes, though, someone would slip through the cracks.  After all, if an orphan was promising, and they at least _looked_ one-hundred percent human, then what was wrong with adding them to the ranks…?

Enter JB007.  Orphaned at the age of eleven.  Mother human.  Father mixed.  The paperwork got mixed up, though, so the fact that his father was one-fourth Shezarandi didn’t come to light until JB007 had already risen in the ranks and begun to show valuable skills.  So, when his impure bloodlines were discovered at age sixteen, a strategic blind eye was turned.  

MI6 had known all along.  

On record, Olivia Mansfield worked for the First Order.  She managed the Biomedical division, and a host of other random but surprisingly influential positions that no one was probably aware of.  Off the record, Olivia Mansfield went by the simple title of M, and ran MI6 - a tiny spot of cancer at the heart of the First Order.  She found JB007 the same day his colony was attacked and he was drafted into the Stormtrooper program, and doctored his files so that he’d be unnoticed, invisible.  Just more fodder in the First Order’s army.  In the meanwhile, M watched the boy closely, and checked to be sure that he had only a small fraction of Shezarandi blood in him - full-blood Shezarands were a handful, and anyone with over half tended to self-destruct while still in their teens.  

JB007 must have had just enough, because he became a terror of his age-group, but somehow managed to get out of all the trouble he got himself into.  

At age fourteen, M met him personally, and told the serious, grim, blue-eyed boy, “Your name is James Bond now.”

“You’re giving me a name?” JB007 asked quietly.  His eyes were too old for the rest of him; most of the First Orders child recruits were orphaned at a younger age, but M had no doubt that this boy remembered everything.  That made him useful.  That made him dangerous.  

“Yes.  I’ll even let you keep that name, if you can show me you deserve it.”

The head of tawny hair had canted to one side, curious like a Zygerrian raptor.  “None of us have names.”

The fact that JB007 was able to differentiate between names and the designations given to child-recruits already showed M that this boy had enough brains to become what she wanted.  MI6 needed people who wouldn’t fold in dangerous situations - and who had enough sense to see past the First Order’s brainwashing.  “How do you know?  Maybe no one has told you their name,” she asked back.  They were sitting in the Medical wing.  JB007’s only negative qualities were that he got into fights a lot, even at this age, and had to be patched up frequently - it was convenient for M, though.  She went on, calm and serious, wondering if the boy was mirroring her or if she was mirroring him, “If you tell anyone this name, I’ll deny that I ever gave it to you.  Then you won’t have a name.  Do you understand?”

JB007… James… cocked his head the other way.  Almost impossibly pale blue eyes - the only thing that could conceivably point to his inhuman heritage - blinked once, a measured movement.  “I understand,” he said.

“Good.”  This was the first test; if the boy couldn’t keep a secret, then he was useless to her.  A liability instead of an asset.  The First Order disapproved of initiative and individuality in its Stormtroopers, and what M hadn’t mentioned was that JB007 would likely be terminated if he started sharing that he had an actual name - and if the First Order didn’t kill him, M herself was more than capable of arranging some sort of accident.  MI6 lived or died by its ability to remain unnoticed within the heart of the First Order.

Once he’d been treated, JB007 obediently got up, preparing to head back to his fellows for more training.  Before he left M’s side, however, he turned to face her, saying unhesitantly, “You can’t take my name away, you know.  You’ve already given it to me.  It’s mine now, even if you never say it again.”

Surprised, the older woman stared for a moment, then found herself fighting a smile.  She didn’t say anything to him, instead giving him a little push towards the door, which he acquiesced to without a fight.  M watched him go, secretly intrigued… and impressed.  

When James Bond managed to keep that secret - and then more secrets, and more and more and more, his loyalties switching over from the First Order to MI6 - M wasn’t in the least surprised.  

~^~

JB007.  Aged thirty-two by the First Order’s reckoning, and a survivor of more shit than he liked to think about on a daily basis.  It had earned him a lot of respect, and even some leeway amidst his cohort - because even if it was frowned on for someone to break formation and run off, JB007 was known for getting results when he flew solo.  His commanders blamed it on his ‘tainted heritage.’  All James cared was that his Shezarandi blood gave him a weirdly acute sense for danger, and while that made him a bit of a ‘troubleseeker,’ it also meant that he knew instinctively who the biggest, meanest opponent on the field was - and no one complained when he went right for them.  

To be fair, it didn’t always end well.  James couldn’t recall how often he’d ended up getting thrashed because he’d somehow managed to pick out the nastiest recruit and annoy them - of course, that had necessitated a steep learning curve, and James picked up fighting skills fast.  It had also allowed him to visit M regularly, and learn more and more about what the First Order didn’t want him to hear.  Like how they were proponents of mass killings.  Genocide.  Mostly, James just hated them because they killed Jedi.  

James also hated them because it was their fault that he’d lost his left arm.  M had told him to look at the bright side: she’d had some of her biotechs come in to do the replacement, so while the First Order had footed the bill, James had gotten a new arm that allowed him to bypass regular communications and feed information straight to M.  So as he was rising in the ranks of the First Order, he was also becoming a priceless MI6 spy.  

Now, though, he was disembarking right into a battlezone on Nik’ah’tenia, and espionage came second to survival.  

JB007 didn’t rank high enough to get mission specs, a fact that M was hounding him for; sadly, all James knew was that he was supposed to shoot anyone who looked dangerous, and that it was damn cold here for a planet that had two suns.  As he marched out of the flyer in his cohort’s wake, he shivered even within his suit, watching as more Stormtroopers in white armor disappeared into the blowing snow.  Trees reached up towards the twilight sky like sickly, burnt fingers, and the only light came from fires ahead.  So they’d already lit the village on fire then…

“JB007,” the words came through the comms, but James already knew where to turn his head; his commander was looking at him.  She nodded briskly, “Sweep the area.  You know what to do.”

“Yes, Commander,” James replied with obedience that he barely had anymore, but could fake reasonably well.  He’d had the potential for rebellion in him from before the death of his parents, and while the First Order would have crushed that spirit, M had fed it - sometimes, James fancied that she regretted that decision.  Fortunately, James had a highly functional survival instinct, and that meant doing as he was told so long as others were watching.  Right now, his commanding officer expected him to do what he did best: troubleseek.  

James broke formation, his rifle muzzle pointed at the ground but his hands cradling the weapon competently.  If there was something lying in wait, something hidden with the potential to turn the tide against the First Order - he’d sense it.  It was hard to describe, something that James simply _did_ without thinking, and he hated to admit that he only understood it about as well as he had when he was five.  He knew that he was like a moth to a flame when it came to danger, but the problem was, the flame was invisible, and he didn’t always know he was headed towards it until he felt the burning.  

Last time that had happened, he’d walked right into a Shugrue battlemaster, and he’d nearly lost his _other_ arm before he’d realized that the slim, five-foot-tall alien was actually dangerous.  This was why M’s hair had turned grey, she claimed.  

Determined not to have a repeat performance of that fiasco, James focused more closely on that little troubleseeking part of himself.  Sometimes he could feel it, like an addictive vibrato in his veins, like the dance of metal shavings when a magnet drew near.  Usually, by the time it became pronounced enough for him to identify the feeling, he was in the thick of a fight, and all he could feel was the heady kick of adrenaline.  Now, though…  He caught it, just the faintest of sensations.  Oddly enough, instead of leading him towards the chaos of the fight itself, it seemed to be calling to him from the snow-carpeted woods.  

Curious now despite himself, James set off at a lope, noticing before long that other footprints had preceded him this way - some were Stormtrooper boots like his, but when James paused and looked more closely, he saw another set of bootprints nearly obscured beneath the more familiar tracks.  He wasn’t alone in his hunting, then.  

At first, that left James hopeful that he’d have back-up, because for all that he was rather literally addicted to trouble, he recognized that he had a higher chance of surviving if he had allies nearby.  However, as James left the fighting and fire further and further behind - a destructive red glow in the distance - he soon came upon bodies.  The fresh corpses of Stormtroopers.  Frowning grimly behind his helmet, James paused again, briefly looking over the first corpse and then the second.  His training by the First Order had made him an efficient soldier, but M’s personal training had made him even colder and more analytical, so he prodded and investigated without any squeamishness to speak of.  What he found made him lower his weapon, freeing up both of his arms so that he could skin off both of his gloves and then his helm.  The frigid air immediately bit into his skin, but it took a skin-on-bioskin contact to activate the private comm-link to M.  James pressed the fingers of his right hand to his left wrist, finding the right spots out of much practice.  “M?” he spoke the words close to his palm, the receiver hidden beneath the lifelike fleshcoat.  

“007,” her voice came back after just a brief pause, indicating that she’d been waiting for him to make contact.  She had to work as hard as anyone else to maintain her cover, but when James was on a mission, she tried to be the one handling the secret comms.  The fact that she was using his shortened designation instead of the name she’d given him so long ago meant that she was in a tense mood.  “What is it?  Report.”

“I’m still not entirely sure why we’re here,” he said, the wind ruffling his hair with icy fingers and whisking the white cloud of his breath away, “but I’m starting to have my suspicions.”

“Explain,” M demanded, curt as always.  He could tell that she was interested, however.  James never reported back frivolously; if anything, he didn’t report back near often enough.  He tended to find reports, in general, irksome.  

James heard a twig snap before he could explain the cauterized wounds that he was seeing.  Without his helmet, he didn’t have night-vision, and if trouble came, he didn’t want to grab his gun with bare hands - because at this temperature, he’d probably end up with his skin freezing to the weapon.  “Standby,” he grunted briefly, and didn’t wait for any sort of reply before breaking the connection and dragging his gloves back on again.  His helmet quickly followed, giving him augmented vision that painted the snowy forest around him in eerily colorless (but precise) outlines.  He focused on the direction that he’d heard the sound coming from, and immediately felt that eager thrum in his veins, that tiny part of him that called out for trouble… and would probably get him killed one of these days.  

There was still one set of footprints leading off into the snow, and now there were dark splashes joining them - blood.  On the whole, James found most of his fellow Stormtroopers to be abysmal fighters, but apparently one of them had hit the mark, injuring their prey.  Staying alert, feeling his entire world sharpening with each beat of his heart, James eased forward, following the prints and the blood.  He picked up speed as noticed the latter growing more frequent, and the former growing less regimented - whoever he was following, they were bleeding more, and walking less steadily.  James’s ‘troubleseeker’ sense, however, told him that the danger hadn’t waned.

Therefore, James was in for a bit of a surprise when he trotted into a small, almost picturesque clearing and saw a singularly unthreatening figure sitting in the snow.

Time and again, James had been taught not to judge opponents on their first appearance, but he had a bad habit of it anyway - as with now, as he took in the injured person he’d been stalking.  So far as he could tell, the fellow was human, with a wild mop of black hair and boyish features.  The rest of him was hidden beneath clothing: long dark sleeves that hid everything but his long pale fingers, a half-cloak that bunched around his neck and swathed his shoulders.  His shirt was belted at the waist like a tunic, and his trousers were wrapped at the ankles, in the fashion of most Nik’ah’tenian colonists, but right above one soft boot his leg was all blood, the result of a scathing rifle-blast.  

As the young man looked up and saw James, his expression was one of wide-eyed fear, and he looked like nothing so much as a young, trapped animal huddled where he’d fallen in the snow.  

And then he yanked a metal cylinder from a punch at his belt, and a beam of blue light sprang forth with a telltale hum.  A lightsaber.

“Damn,” James muttered in the confines of his helm.  

While the First Order had a lot of plans for the universe, and quite a few items on its grocery list of conquest, its biggest goal was the elimination of the Jedi.  They’d already all but succeeded when James was still a child, and even since his entrance in the First Order twenty-one years ago, James had only heard tell of four other Jedi.  They were a dying breed, near extinction.  The fact that this one was still alive, and so young, meant that he had to be new - but James was willing to bet his life on the fact that this entire attack on Nik’ah’tenia had been to kill this one young Jedi.  

By the way the black-haired youth was struggling to his feet, saber held out in front of him in a desperate, two-handed grip, he was well aware of that fact himself.  What he was not aware of, however, was that James had other orders.

Very carefully, James transferred his rifle to one hand, lifting both of his arms up in a universal gesture of peace.  “Easy,” he said, not liking the lightsaber’s dangerous hum even as his own troubleseeker sense started humming gleefully back.  James told it to shut up, before it got him killed.  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Like hell you’re not,” the Jedi spat back, proving that he at least spoke Commons, and that he had a bit more fire in him than initially suspected: he tried to lunge forward.  ‘Tried’ was the operative word, however, as he stumbled on his bad leg; his saber cut a deep, hissing swatch in the snow as the youth gave it a threatening swing.  

James watched the movement, eyes calculating.  He’d met Jedi before.  This one didn’t know what he was doing yet; he was just a pup.  

James, on the other hand, was strenuously trained in just about every weapon in existence, and it was starting to look like he’d have to use that training.  

He tried for a peaceful resolution one last time, even though he’d already pretty much given up on that plan.  Knowing that the robotic voice could be intimidating, he took off his helmet, once again feeling the cold against his cheeks and seeing the world in muted, twilight colors.  The snow seemed almost to glow, and the Jedi’s hair seemed all the blacker by contrast.  “Look, I mean it - I’m not here-”

“To hurt me?” was the sharp response, as the Jedi scrambled to regain his balance.  He was standing now, more or less, even if he had to keep one hand out for balance and the other hand held his lightsaber uncertainty.  James watched the glowing blade carefully.  “Oh, just like those other two Stormtroopers weren’t here to hurt me?  Is that it?” the young man went on caustically.  

James eased a few steps forward in the snow, putting his rifle down carefully.  “I’m not actually with them.  Not quite,” he said.

Unfortunately, the young Jedi wasn’t buying it, and the second James started straightening, the dark-haired youth lunged at him.  Bond reevaluated his initial assumption - that the Jedi was too injured to move much - as he found himself dodging a blade of whirring blue light.  James managed to duck down, grab his rifle again, and swing it up just in time to get the weapon sliced cleanly in half.  “Fuck,” James found himself swearing again, this time without a helmet to muffle his words - or protect his head, although against an active lightsaber, it really didn’t make much difference.  James managed to avoid the same fate as his rifle, and rolled further out of reach.  

The problem was, without a weapon, that put him at a distinct disadvantage.  Thankfully, James had been fighting at a disadvantage ever since age he was a child, and his genetic tendencies kept telling him to step on the toes of kids bigger than him.  Quickly assessing the situation, James charged back into the fray, diving into a skidding roll across the snow as the Jedi tried to skewer him along the way.  The blond-haired man didn’t immediately regain his feet, instead rolling onto his back even as the Jedi struggled to turn after him - before the Jedi could make it all the way around to strike at him again, James kicked out, his boot firmly catching the younger man’s injured leg.  The Jedi crumpled with a high-pitched yelp, and the lightsaber went out.  

Knowing that he’d have to end this quickly - both for his own sake and for the Jedi’s, because eventually someone else would follow the tracks in the snow - James rolled onto his knees.  He was already planning ahead, figuring out what he was going to do, but he needed to immobilize this damn Jedi first, hopefully without hurting the youth any more than he already was.  MI6 was against the First Order in a lot of ways, but the most strident difference in ideology had to do with Jedis: M and her chosen spies wanted to save them.  

That had been what had ultimately gotten James to side with them, actually.  

When his parents had died, he’d been old enough to remember a lot of things: his parents, his home.  A name before JB007.  A name before James Bond.  Jedis.  

Unfortunately, this dark-haired little sod didn’t seem ready to listen to James’s reassurances of his safety, and just as James was reaching down for him, the younger man twisted onto his back and reached upwards with a desperate hand.  James immediately felt an invisible fist lock around his throat, forcing his head back and squeezing his windpipe closed.

Something hot and angry boiled up in James, something that had boiled up in that eleven-year-old boy when his house had been burning.  He should have died with his parents - he’d sensed the danger coming, and like the troubleseeker that he was, he’d run right for it, just like he always did.  When their colony had been attacked - by the fucking First Order - James had ended up pinned in the burning wreckage of his own home.  What had kept him alive then, and every day since then, was that James’s will to survive burned hotter than any fire that had ever tried to burn the life out of him.

So now, as he felt the Jedi’s desperate but inexperienced use of the Force latch around his throat, James snarled and ignored the spots dancing in front of his vision.  He was stuck on his knees, choking to death, the Jedi trying to push him further away - the Jedi’s other hand was scrambling in the snow for his saber, and James saw the second the Jedi found it.  Even if he hadn’t, he heard the hum of it turning on again.  Baring his teeth more fiercely, James jerked his body, testing and feeling how the Force around his throat wasn’t perfect.  He remembered the blood in the snow, the look of inexperience and fear on the Jedi’s face and he could all but feel the way that the Jedi was struggling against James’s greater weight.  

Consciousness fading, James closed his eyes and focused on that hum in his veins…

Without having to look, he felt it when the lightsaber was swung his way, and James chose then to heave himself forward with all of his weight.  It nearly crushed his windpipe to do it, but it surprised the Jedi, and it also threw off his aim - enough so that James’s hand latched onto the Jedi’s wrist, halting the saber before it could slice him in half.  

The Jedi was clearly surprised, because his use of the Force wavered and finally crumpled.  The surprise wasn’t over, though: James’s grab had been sloppy, and while he’d avoided an untimely death, the lightsaber had bitten into his arm with a hissing snarl.  When James didn’t react in the slightest, however - because it was his left arm, his synthetic arm, which had only the most basic nerve responses - the Jedi’s eyes widened nearly to the point of popping out of his head.  James, still choking and trying to breath, took swift advantage of that and wrenched the lightsaber out of the Jedi’s grip.  It went out once again, and when it looked like the Jedi would try to use the Force to drag it back, James coughed out a growl that might have translated to “Oh, no you don’t” and dislocated the Jedi’s right arm.

Did he feel like a bastard for doing it?  Yes.

Did he also feel like it was fucking necessary?  Yes.  In fact, James felt a certain amount of grim satisfaction as he forcefully ignored the Jedi’s cry of pain - dragged in a wheezing but full breath - and then lashed out with a precise punch to the Jedi’s chin.  The younger man fell limp, unconscious.  

James, hovering over the dark-haired youth by this point, sagged forward onto hands and knees.  His breath ricocheted off a flushed cheek, but the Jedi was well and truly out cold.  “Bloody,” Bond panted, “buggering… fuck…”  Looking around, he took stock, seeing his cleaved rifle, the blood trail in the snow, the dormant lightsaber just barely sticking out of that same snow, and his own arm, serviceable but with a new, melted furrow across his bicep.  

Tech like the kind that had gone into James’s arm didn’t come cheap.  M was going to kill him.  

“Not if I come home with a Jedi,” he rasped to himself, pushing himself belatedly to his knees again.  After a quick look, he judged that the only life-threatening injury was the Jedi’s leg, something he could solve quickly.  The dislocated arm could and would wait.  

Having torn strips from the Jedi’s cowl to field-bandage his bleeding calf, James heaved his unconscious quarry up onto his shoulders.  Taking a deep breath, he looked back the way he came.  

“Time to steal a First Order ship,” he sighed to himself, already feeling that buzz of impending trouble starting up in his limbs again.  Moving determinedly through the snow, movements swift and steady despite his load, James prepared to do something that would most certainly out him as a turncoat.  

But it would probably save one of the last Jedi, so it would be worth it.  

~^~

James’ cohort had arrived on a nameless ship designed for nothing more or less than ferrying Stormtroopers around like cargo.  It was unwieldy, it was slow, and it was most certainly not a ship worth stealing.  His commander’s ship, however…

Rank afforded one certain privileges, such as the privilege of having a small ship, so as not to travel with the common rabble.  Bond, being of mixed heritage, would never be promoted and therefore never receive his own ship - however, his skills had qualified him for the _training_ , if not the promotion.  In short, James actually had equal (if not superior) field experience and skills to his commander, and therefore could fly ships.  And thanks to the upgrade he’d had on his left arm, he could also break into and hijack ships even if they weren’t registered to him.  His commanders ship, the _Regial_ , for example.

It sounded like the fighting was almost over, but James could still feel an itch between his shoulder-blades every time he looked out from the trees and towards the fading sounds of fire and weapons-fire.  There was still danger there, and he felt its tug like an addiction.  Instead of going, however, he lowered the captured Jedi to the ground and hurriedly removed the youth’s belt to serve as a restraint.  Hacking into the _Regial_ would only take moments, but he’d feel awfully stupid if the Jedi woke up and tried to scarper during that time.  Even with one dislocated arm and a bum leg, the Jedi would manage to get into some sort of trouble, James strongly suspected.  So, after binding the young man’s hands behind his back, James also found the edge of the Jedi’s cowl, where it served as a loose hood.  James pulled it forward over the Jedi’s head and knotted it in place for good measure.  Even if the Jedi decided to try and hop away, he wouldn’t get very far blind.  One of James’s childhood memories was of owning a hunting hawk, and learning that it took comfort from being hooded (or, at the least, didn’t try to fly off).  James wasn’t sure how similar Jedis were to Zygerrian hunting hawks, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.

Leaving the Jedi trussed up at the edge of the trees, James fixed his eyes on the _Regial_ , ran over his plan once more in his head, and then bolted into action.  He’d recovered his helmet and gloves, and therefore could hear the background chatter of general orders being relayed through the comms (reminding him that he’d have to contact M eventually, to clue her in), and while no one seemed to be looking specifically for him yet, he knew he had a limited amount of time before Stormtroopers started returning.  It was child’s-play to get past the skeleton crew standing guard around the ships.  Pressing himself up against the _Regial’s_ landing gear, James skinned off his left glove, once again baring his robotic hand.  When he flexed it, the hand and fingers looks as real as anyone’s, unless he looked further up his arm to see the melted metal where the lightsaber had caught him.  James grimaced behind his helmet, then pressed his hand flush to the electronic lock-pad by the ship’s door.  The _Regial_ was high-tech, which was just the way James liked it.  There was a faint tingling sensation - one of the limited sensations that he still had in that limb - and after a few heartbeats, the lock gave way, tricked by the tech imbedded in James’s hand.  Computers weren’t exactly James’s favorite toys to play with, but he had enough cheat-codes that he could make quite a menace of himself when he wanted to.  Like now.  

As expected, the Commander’s copilot had stayed behind to watch the ship.  The little, balding man was startled to see that it wasn’t actually his superior boarding - James didn’t give him much time to worry about it, however,  One swift charge and two well-placed punches were all it took to drop the copilot.  James relieved the other man of his weapons, then dragged the copilot out and dropped him in the slurried snow.  “So much for my promising career in the First Order,” James sighed to himself, noting that there was no turning back now.  No one had seen his face, but it wouldn’t take much to deduce that it was JB007 who had mysteriously disappeared at the same time the _Regial_ was stolen.

No alarms had been sounded by the time James trotted back to the Jedi, however - who was, thankfully, still unconscious.  James gathered him up carefully, suddenly aware that this was one of the most precious things he’d ever held before: Jedi were nearly extinct, and the universe couldn’t afford to lose any more.  Already, James was feeling a bit bad for injuring the fellow, although he logically knew that he hadn’t had much choice.  

Deciding to be pragmatic and callous now, and save the gentleness for when he could afford it, James hauled his cargo back to the _Regial_ with all speed.  This time, he had a feeling that someone spotted him, but no one was too suspicious of the Stormtrooper uniform - meaning James was onboard and closing up the hatch before anyone could stop him.  Like all things made by the First Order, the inside of the _Regial_ was almost clinical looking, everything geometric and white, but at least some thought had been spared for comfort: there was a bench to the back of the main cabin, presumably for either sleeping or carrying wounded.  Either way, it served as a good place to set the Jedi down, positioning the young man on his side and finding the appropriate straps to tie him down.  James patted the Jedi’s hooded head, saying with a tone that was part regret… part growing excitement, “This might get a bit bumpy.”  

 _Now_ James was beginning to hear shouting in the comms.  He mostly ignored it, realizing that he was probably never going to report in to the First Order ever again; the only reason he hadn’t removed the stifling helm entirely was because it allowed him to listen in on the orders being given.  Right now, those orders weren’t quite that interesting, but they would be in a moment.  

James buckled himself into the pilot’s seat and, after a moment to refamiliarize himself with the system, powered up the _Regial_.  She whined as if she knew this wasn’t her real master, but gave in and began her take-off sequence as James continued to flick switches and turn dials, the exercise beaten into him by the First Order and M both.  M had always said that he’d need this skill - he wondered if she’d somehow foreseen that he’d end up on the run with a Jedi pup.  

Orders were coming through both the comms in his helmet and directly to the _Regial_ , but James just smiled and turned the engines on, relishing the muffled roar as they scorched the snowy earth in a totally unnecessary manner.  “This is for never promoting me, you purist arseholes,” he growled, even as the _Regial_ shook free of gravity and rose up like a big metal leaf caught in its own roaring wind.

No one had figured out that JB007 was flying the Regial yet, but word was spreading quickly now that one of their ships was taking off without permission.  That would become an issue eventually, because each First Order ship was connected - they could be tracked, and sometimes even remotely controlled.  Thankfully, James had a few tricks literally up his sleeve, so while he manned the joystick with one hand, he pressed his left palm against one of the touchscreens and once again felt the tingle of connection.  The biotech link was just about the most elegant piece of gadgetry that he’d ever witnessed, and he barely even knew how it worked - but it was intuitive enough that he could use it to hijack just about anything with just a thought.  To his knowledge, it worked on two levels: decryption software that let him break into anything, and more destructive viruses that scrambled systems that might work against him.  He just had to hope he didn’t destroy the _Regial’s_ entire computer system instead of just deflecting any attempts by the First Order to stop them.  

When the ship neither crashed nor powered down without warning, James grinned fiercely and turned his attention back to flying.  

The _Regial_ was a fast ship.  While most of the ships that had landed on Nik’ah’tenia were purely cargo vessels, made for carrying Stormtroopers and little more, the _Regial_ was a fighter.  She was no warship by any means, but she was designed so that she could put up a fight - and move if she had to.  James half-wished that he’d had an ally with him, so that one of them could have given the _Regial’s_ guns a test.  Being on the run should have terrified him, but James couldn’t feel anything but a burgeoning elation that felt a lot like his ‘troubleseeker’ sense - but increased tenfold.  That either meant he was about to embark on the most dangerous mission of his life, or he’d finally lost his ability to be scared.

~^~

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James has himself a Jedi. Now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter in which Q wakes up, and proves that he's a sassy shit when he's scared (Bond secretly likes the sass)

There had been pursuit, but James had gotten a headstart and wasn’t afraid to fly fast.  That, combined with his innate ability to sense and judge the danger of the situation,  meant that it hadn’t been long before he’d lost his tails in a solar storm.  Usually, James’s troubleseeker-sense just got him into trouble, but the fact that he wasn’t dead yet proved that he really was quite good at judging when situations were dangerous, but not necessarily deadly.  Everyone else had apparently taken one look at the solar storm and thought he was suicidally insane, because they hadn’t followed.  Tentatively, James planned to hide within the storm as long as possible, because it also drove the sensors mad - so he no longer had to use MI6’s tech to scramble any First Order signals.  So far, no one had managed to remotely take command of the _Regial_ , and James’s brute meddling hadn’t blown any fuses, but he didn’t want to push his luck if he didn’t have to.  Besides his general worries about damaging his own ship, James was beginning to worry about the damage already done - to his own arm.  He’d tried to contact M again, but this time had gotten only static, and the lightsaber-made wound on his upper arm had buzzed and crackled with severed connections.  

With the _Regial_ on autopilot and doing admirably well at fighting the constant turbulence, James got up to belatedly check on his shipmate.  

The Jedi had been discreetly struggling against the straps and buckles for about fifteen minutes now, no doubt trying to be quiet about it.  Even with his focus on the storm and on not getting caught, James had heard a few stifled whimpers of pain, though.  James belatedly realized that he hadn’t put the youth’s shoulder back in place yet, to say nothing for the rifle-graze on the Jedi’s right leg.  

Instead of saying something comforting, however, what came out of James’s mouth was a candid, “It’ll hurt less if you stop wriggling.”

The Jedi froze, his head twisting beneath the hood.  “Who are you and what do you want?” the young man demanded in an admirably stern voice for someone trussed up and blinded.  James was impressed despite himself at the moxie on display.  

“Bond. James Bond,” he introduced, sitting down on the edge of the padded bench so that he could get a good look at the Jedi’s leg - still the most immediately dangerous injury, despite James’s field-dressing.  “And if you use the Force on me again, I’m going to truss you up so tightly you won’t be able to move.”  James lightened his voice markedly, adding blithely, “Other than that, you could call me an ally.”

The Jedi’s head was angled slightly towards him, but James had already judged that the material was too thick to see through.  He was proven right when he touched the Jedi’s ankle, and the young man startled so hard that the straps over his body groaned.  “Easy, easy,” James soothed, “One of my compatriots did a number on your leg, and I haven’t really gotten a good look at it yet.”

“So you _are_ a Stormtrooper,” the Jedi accused, in a tone that said this title negated James’s earlier suggestion of being an ally.  

“JB007,” James admitted without rancor.  Most of his focus was on the leg in front of him, as he began undoing the bandages.  When he’d disarmed the copilot, he’d also requisitioned a small knife from the man, and used it to cut away the Jedi’s trouser leg a bit, too.  “But I don’t think that I’ll be going by that designation again,” he finished ruefully.  At the same time, however, he felt something blossoming warmly in his chest… something that might have been elation at a newfound freedom.  

For a second, the Jedi was silent, perhaps because it took effort not to make sounds of pain as the bandages were peeled back from torn skin.  After a moment, though, he proved that he was still part of the conversation: “Stormtroopers don’t have names.”

“Good ones don’t,” James agreed with amendment, just to see what the Jedi would make of that.  When no answer was immediately forthcoming, however, James broke the sullen silence to ask in a more coaxing tone, “What’s your name?”  When he didn’t get an answer and the quiet in fact got more sullen, James felt the need to add, “If you don’t give me something to call you, then I’m probably going to name you after my childhood pet.  She was a Zygerrian hunting hawk, and looked sort of like you do right now, in a hood.”  

At that moment, a bit of turbulence gave the ship a real shaking, and the Jedi cried out and tried to curl his body in on itself.  James steadied the young man with a hand on his hip, observing grimly, “She took to flying a bit better than you do.”

“I like flying just fine,” the other man snapped, “when the ship doesn’t feel like it’s being shaken apart in something’s mouth!  Where the hell did you fly us?”

“Into a solar storm?”

The Jedi froze.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“It was that or get run down by the First Order,” James shrugged, “Now do you believe that I’m on your side?”

“No,” was the grumpy grumble.  

Huffing and turning his attention to finding a first-aid kit - an easy task, as he knew the _Regial’s_ layout from training - James tried, “Can you at least give me something to call you?  I was serious about the hawk’s name, but I don’t think you want to be called Scorpi.”

“Scorpi?”  The Jedi sounded almost adorably affronted, and James fought the urge to laugh.  

He’d found the first-aid kit exactly where he’d expected, and came back now to resume his seat.  “Short for ‘scorpion.’  I assume you know what-?”

“You named your bird,” the Jedi deadpanned, unimpressed, “after an insect?”

“Well, to be fair, the versions of scorpions that I grew up with were nearly as long as your arm, and capable of flying,” James took up the tale easily, using it as a distraction as he took out a short wand from the kit - a sterilizing tool.  He knew from experience that it stung a bit.  “My mother had actually wanted to get me one of those as a pet, but my father talked her out of it.  Zygerrian hawks were more expensive to import, but apparently less dangerous for a young boy to train.”

The young Jedi did indeed flinch as the cleaning process began, but James had a strong hand on his ankle, and the Jedi quieted after the initial jerk.  He must have recognized the sensation.  Perhaps that same realization (that James really was helping him rather than needlessly hurting him) was what got him to grudgingly reply a moment later, “Fine.  You can call me Q.”

“Q?  As in the letter?”  Bond actually knew multiple alphabets, but as they were talking in Commons, he made an educated guess.

Proving him right, the Jedi - Q - snipped back, “You gave me an alphanumeric designation - so I’m giving you a letter.  Fair is fair.”

It really didn’t sound all that fair, but James found himself smirking anyway.  “Q it is then.  If I take your hood off, will you try anything?”

For a moment, Q’s body language said that he’d shoot back something belligerent - James could see the way his body tightened and his head reared back archly beneath the fabric - but then he winced again, and seemed to deflate.  Dislocated shoulders and grazed legs could do that to a person.  “No,” he eventually sighed.  

“Let me finish patching up your leg first,” James said, not unkindly.  In fact, on impulse, he spared a moment to reach back with one hand and give the Jedi’s head a soothing stroke through the hood.  The touch took Q by the surprise, but when James also said, gently enough, “Just sit tight,” the Jedi actually relaxed.  It was impossible to tell if he was actually trusting James at all, or becoming exhausted by the pain he was in, but the results were positive regardless.  James would take what he could get.

There was another small metal rod capable of knitting skin, so long as the wound wasn’t too serious - it was just perfect for Q’s situation.  For all that James didn’t care much for the Order, he had to marvel at their technology, as he did now, passing the rod slowly back and forth over the sundered skin of Q’s leg, watching as the soft glow of the simple-looking gadget began to magically replace the skin that had gone missing.  

If only it could do the same with James’s biomechanical arm, so that he could get back into contact with MI6…  

“All right, you’ve got two working legs again,” James declared, swiveling now to face the Jedi’s upper half - which tensed a little bit, as if sensing that the Stormtrooper’s attention had shifted.  “Now, before I un-hood you, I want to remind you that you still only have one working arm, though,” he added.  

Q made a scoffing noise even as James’s hands found the fabric around his head.  “No thanks to you.”

“To be fair, you’d been doing your level best to throttle me to death just seconds before,” James retorted, but not with any particular rancor.  He was fairly used to people trying to kill him, and had long ago ceased to take it personally.  Not being promoted?  Now that was just insulting.  Attempted murder?  He could let that slide, because he’d have done the same if he’d been in Q’s place, and had access to the Force and a lightsaber.  Said lightsaber was presently locked away where Q hopefully wouldn’t be able to get to it anytime soon.  

Before the argument could be carried further, James loosened off the knotted fabric and pulled it back to reveal a tousled mop of dark hair and striking green eyes that blinked rapidly as they were subjected to the sudden brightness of the ship’s interior.  Q’s lips pursed even as his pupils shrank, but after looking mildly perturbed, he did the sensible thing and tried to take in everything around him.  Parallels to hooded hawks quickly reappeared in James’s mind as the Jedi’s breathing picked up swiftly, and his expression just as quickly took on a cornered, desperate look - like James’s childhood pet, Q had found some calm within the darkness, when there was nothing he could do but be still and listen.  Now, though, with his sight returned, James could all but see Q’s brain starting to kick into anxious overdrive.  

James raised both of his hands in a non-threatening gesture, but Q’s eyes still snapped to him with a full-body flinch.  “Easy, you’re all right,” James crooned, feeling eight years old again, with a fresh bundle of scared feathers on his hands.  He watched Q’s nostrils flare, his lips whiten from being pressed together.  He could also see pain in every line of his body, from his dislocated shoulder.  Remorse twisted James’s gut, because that was quite fully his fault.  “I’m going to untie your wrists, all right?  And then I promise, I’ll make your shoulder stop hurting.  Can you trust me that long?”

Still looking at James as if the blond-haired man were a Sith Lord or something, the Jedi replied shortly, “No.”

For a moment, James just blinked.  Then he sighed and ran a hand down over his face, muttering, “Well, at least you’re truthful.”  Dropping his hand back to his lap, he countered stubbornly, “Fine.  If you can be truthful, so can I: we’re in the middle of a solar storm right now, and it’s only a matter of time before I either have to take the wheel or the First Order gets the balls to follow us here.  That means there’s a swiftly shrinking window of time for me to get your shoulder joint back into its socket.  Do you understand?”

Now Q was really staring at him in a horrified fashion; in fact, now it looked like Q thought his captor was quite deranged.  “You _really_ flew us into a _solar storm_?” he echoed back in shock.

“You thought I was kidding about that earlier?”

“I thought that maybe you weren’t _bloody insane_!”

“It’s actually a genetic condition.”

While Q was stuttering over a response, clearly gobsmacked by this new insight into James’s personality, the Stormtrooper… ex-Stormtrooper, really… took the opportunity to lean over Q and swiftly release his restraints.  His timing was good, and he was fast, so before the Jedi could make use of his newfound freedom, James had snapped loose one of the buckles holding Q’s torso down and then taken hold of his right arm and shoulder.  It was but the work of a moment to jerk everything back into place.  The Jedi’s cry of pain was like a punch to James’s solar plexus, but he figured he deserved a bit of guilt over the matter.  “Better?”

Perhaps Bond’s question had a bit too much levity, because Q (his arms in front of him now, curled up against Bond’s hip like a human comma) scowled and gritted out, “You bastard.”

“Why, Q, you’re so welcome,” James mocked back, saccharinely, as much amused as annoyed by the young Jedi’s pervasive snark, “And you’re welcome for being saved from the First Order, too - I could have just left you.”  Deciding to take a risk, James got up and left the Jedi - still held down by one seatbelt and weathering the last of the fading pain - instead returning to the helm.  His innate sense for danger was still buzzing slightly, but the more he was around Q, the more he began to measure that danger in finite detail.  For example, he was beginning to re-evaluate, factoring in the fact that this was clearly not a veteran Jedi, but a new one.  Still, he called back over his shoulder as he walked away, “And before you think of doing away with me, realize that I’ve basically sabotaged the computer.  You won’t be able to fly the ship without me.”

At first he thought that he wouldn’t get a response, that Q had taken that warning for what it was, and was mulling everything over.  James had actually been sitting down for a good five minutes - his bare, synthetic hand splayed on one of the screens again - adjusting their position, when he heard the Jedi fight loose of the last strap and get up.  James didn’t turn.  This Jedi was not sneaky, and already James was able to track his movements by the soft shuffling of Q’s boots.  When they hit an unexpected rough-patch in the storm, the Jedi ended up slewing forward, catching himself against the copilot’s chair with a little hiss of pained breath.  Now when James glanced at him, he saw that the Jedi looked a bit airsick, and somehow younger than he’d appeared at previous angles.  

The Jedi seemed to steady a little bit as he looked at the dials and screens, however (the viewport being largely useless, just a mass of dark and rippling light).  “You make a lot of assumptions,” the younger man said cagily after a few moments.  

James was willing to play, even if he didn’t know what Q was getting at.  “How so?”  Going more off his troubleseeker sense than any of the screens, James angled the ship to one side, and some of the turbulence faded away.  

“You’re assuming,” Q went on, quite factually, even if James couldn’t miss the undertone of acid that was still buried there, “that I don’t know anything about hacking into ships’ systems.  I might be perfectly capable of re-taking the ship.”

The casual pridefulness had James fighting a smile.  On a whim, he push his chair back and lifted his hands away from the controls, gesturing and offering, “Be my guest.”

Green eyes flicked over to James, instantly suspicious.  When the Stormtrooper merely folded his arms (the armor he was still wearing giving a quiet creak) and canted his head, though, the Jedi grew cautiously intrigued.  He stepped with a light-footed walk as if he were expecting James to jump him at any second, but he nonetheless came close enough to the blond-haired Stormtrooper to look over the _Regial’s_ controls.  Curious himself, James watched as Q assessed everything: the Jedi’s eyes were quick and keen, and when he eventually reached forward to touch the nav-screen, his movements were competent.  Maybe he really could fly a ship.  

Of course, this ship was barely flyable, since it had met up with James Bond’s particular skills.

“What the fuck did you do to this ship?” Q asked in a very nearly dangerous growl two minutes later.  By now he was hunched over the displays and all but in James’s lap, totally focused on the varying switches, buttons, and screens he was interacting with - and he didn’t look as though he liked what he was seeing.  Somehow, that made James very proud.  

By way of answer, James raised his left arm.  Q’s eyes immediately darted back to it, the Jedi shifting uneasily as if just now noticing their various positions - his gaze soon lit on the deep score still visible in James’s armor, however, seeming to notice it for the first time.  James explained before he could be asked, “I got an involuntary upgrade in this arm a few years ago.”  He waggled his fingers and allowed a ghost of a smile onto his face even as Q’s eyebrows lowered cautiously.  “Let’s just say that some of the tech isn’t strictly First Order regulation material.”  

James could tell that he’d caught the Jedi’s interest now, and was secretly quite chuffed to find that Q was the curious sort - and that James was now the focus of that curiosity.  The young man turned around slowly, until he had his back to the panels and screens, and his knees were nearly touching James’s, his narrowed hazel eyes focused on the damaged arm.  “I was wondering why you barely reacted when I cut you,” Q murmured, half to himself.  His eyes grew hot again for a second, leaving James’s arm in favor of glaring at his blue eyes, demanding, “Where _is_ my lightsaber?”

“Safe.”  James folded his arms again and added unabashedly, “And I’m not telling you where it is until I’m sure you won’t try to skewer me with it.”

“How do you know I won’t just find it on my own?”

“Because I have the sneaking suspicion that you’re a terribly young Jedi, and sensing a well-hidden lightsaber might be a bit beyond you,” James replied shrewdly, never breaking eye-contact.

The Jedi flushed and looked away, unconsciously leaning back against the control panel until he bumped something.  Thankfully, James really had fucked up the _Regial’s_ systems, because while Q jumped, the ship itself just gave an angry little beep but otherwise did nothing.  Fighting the urge to laugh - because he had a feeling that that would offend the Jedi to the point of no return - James slid his chair forward again and belatedly returned to manning the controls.  Q moved out of the way, still pink-cheeked, but watched keenly as James splayed his bare left hand over a control panel again.  In fact, within seconds, Q was at his shoulder, apparently getting over any sort of wariness he might have had.  “Your prosthetic is equipped to force a softlink connection,” the Jedi murmured, head tilting so that locks of dark hair fell over his eyes and had to be flicked out of the way.

“I have no idea what that means,” James replied amicably, focusing on flying the ship.  The storm was moving, and he was keen to stay in it - like a prey-animal keeping to the shadows.  It didn’t help that half of the sensors were getting pretty spotty, providing data in fits and bursts.  

Q was leaning closer now, inspecting the way James’s left hand was splayed.  The Jedi sounded a lot like a slightly distracted lecturer as he absently elaborated, “It means you’re connecting to the system without actually accessing any ports - instead of politely putting a key in a lock, you’re breaking the door down.”

“Sounds about my style.”

“Of course it does,” the young Jedi scoffed, but it lacked bite.  He stilled seemed to be gleaning the secrets of the universe from James’s hand, which was beginning to get slightly unnerving.  “Incredible.  You really don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

“Your belief in my skills is truly staggering.”

“No, I mean-” the Jedi stumbled, then gathered his words again with a frown that put a cute pucker between his eyebrows, “I mean, you’re doing this subconsciously.  You’ve clearly done something to the ship’s entire system, and have some manner of control - but you truly don’t know the details?”

Multitasking wasn’t exactly something that the First Order trained their Stormtroopers to do, but thankfully, M’s personal lessons had been a bit more expansive and grueling.  James was able to think on the question without crashing them into a solar wave or a passing asteroid.  “I know that if I place it against a door, I can override the locks, and that if I press my hand against pretty much anything else, I can scramble it past repair.  I know that there’s a hardline that goes to my central nervous system, but my control over everything is still pretty basic.”

“It’s actually quite advanced,” Q opined, finally straightening.  If James wasn’t mistaken, there had actually been some real respect in his voice - although that aspect seemed, sadly, to be reserved purely for James’s prosthetic arm.  “Most biomechanical limbs are capable of mimicking basic motor functions, and the expensive ones are all but perfect replicas.  But to add a computer component…”  Q shook his head, still staring at James’s arm… a bit covetously, actually.  “It’s one thing to get your brain on speaking terms with a mechanical limb to make it work, but it’s another thing entirely to then make a third connection to an outside computer, translating your will into basic code.”  Suddenly Q looked up, eyes wide with interest as he caught James’s slightly wary blue gaze, “What else can it do?”

“ _My arm_ ,” James stressed, having not felt so disconnected from his own limb since the weeks following its attachment to his destroyed shoulder, “also allows me to covertly contact my people within the First Order - the same people who gave me standing orders not to kill Jedi pups like you.”

“I’m not a pup.”

“You’re sure as hell not full-grown.”

Q glared for a moment, but just when James thought that the Jedi might actually use the Force to try and choke him again, the storm around them made itself known again.  As the ship lurched, Q actually lost his balance entirely, falling and just barely managing to catch himself with one hand on the arm of Bond’s chair and the other on Bond’s knee.  James himself had bigger things to worry about, so he tipped his chin towards the copilot’s seat and grunted shortly, “Strap yourself in.  I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.”  

~^~

There were probably others reasons besides his heritage that kept James’s from having responsibility for a ship in the First Order - high on that list of reasons was probably the fact that James was an exceedingly reckless flyer.

“Well, the good news is, we’re out of the solar storm,” James declared, chipper.

Q, sitting next to him with a death-grip on the copilot’s harness, was still looking forward at nothing, eyes a bit wild and pallor a bit green.  “I think I’m going to vomit,” he said in a tone that was more of a whimper.  

James couldn’t help it: he looked over and coaxed, “Most people ask what the bad news is, at this point.”

Unfortunately, Q already had an answer to that, said with resigned horror and absolute certainty, “ _You_ are the bad news.”  The Jedi’s voice rose a bit hysterically, “You just flew us right through one of the nastiest solar storms I’ve ever seen, and you did it with a ship that barely works!”

For a moment, James tried to figure out if that last bit was a compliment or not.  Q’s tone seemed to indicate not, but it sure sounded like a compliment…  The blond-haired man decided that returning to more important matters was probably necessary.  “See, therein lies the problem.”  When Q finally looked over at him, mouth twitching down in a frown, James hurried to explain, “This is a First Order ship - meaning they have their purist mark all over it.  That means we’ll not only be easily recognizable to any bastard with a lick of sense, but the First Order can track these ships.”  Q’s eyes got wide, but James wasn’t done yet, and made a placating gesture with his right hand - his left hand was once again pressed against one of the _Regial’s_ touchscreens.  “Right now, I’m botching any said efforts to track us.  Unfortunately… that means I’m also botching the ship in general.”

“So we need a new ship.”

“We need a new ship,” James agreed, nodding.  

“What are the chances of us finding a new ship before this one self-destructs or the First Order waltzes around the storm and sees us limping along?” Q asked, and now his tone was so dry that James had to wonder if the Jedi was messing with him.  When James looked over, Q was just staring at him with what had to be a purposefully bland expression, although James could still see the flecks of pure hysteria hidden poorly behind the mask.  It was both amusing and somewhat infuriating to know that Q dealt with panic by subtly sassing people.

Sarcastic or not, the question was valid, so he took in a thoughtful breath and let it out slowly, explaining, “That storm was pretty big.  Any pursuit would have a bit of a trip going around, whereas we went through - and by this point they’re probably not looking for a ship so much as debris.  They have no way of knowing that we found the eye of the storm to bide our time in.”

Even if Q’s Jedi skills clearly needed polishing, his mind was quick, as he raised one eyebrow and asked, “How did _you_ know there was an eye?”

“I didn’t,” James admitted with a certain amount of pride.

What color Q had been regaining immediately disappeared, and both of his eyebrows disappeared under his hairline seconds before he buried his face in his hands.  He groaned past his fingers, “Gods, I’ve been kidnapped by an utter maniac.”

“ _Rescued_ ,” James stressed the distinction, “You’ve been _rescued_.  Kidnapping implies being taken away from something good - rescuing is when you get saved from something bad, like being slaughtered by unsympathetic Stormtroopers.”

Q just moaned dramatically again before raising his head and saying in an accusing tone, “Which you _still_ haven’t explained yet!”

“I’ll make you a deal,” James tried, feeling his sense for danger give a twitch, reminding him that while Q might indeed be just a Jedi pup, he still had some teeth on him - as James’s damaged arm and bruised throat could attest.  “If you can bring up some charts and find us an inhabited planet to fly to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about why I made myself a fugitive for your sake instead of just killing you.  Deal?”

Beneath the messy fall of his dark hair, Q’s eyes were rife with suspicion, but after looking at James so closely that the Stormtrooper half expected to feel his skin burning, the Jedi jerked his chin in a perfunctory nod.  “Fine.  Deal.  But it had better be one helluvan explanation.”

Thinking it all over (his personal history and atypical lineage, everything with MI6), James realized that it would be quite an explanation indeed - and one that he hadn’t had the opportunity to speak out loud before.  He found himself looking forward to it, like a child looking forward to returning to a childhood home they barely remembered.  “You can count on it, Q,” he assured.

~^~

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of my students' papers just came in, needing grading, so it the next update will probably bet a bit longer in coming XP But it's not as much of a cliffhanger as the last chapter! And you got to see stroppy, mouthy Q! And you got to see Q being more than mildly horrified by this crazy man he's be rescued/kidnapped by...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Q find themselves a place to get a new ship. Can Q trust James long enough to get that far? 
> 
> Maybe. 
> 
> Can James be less of an arse? 
> 
> Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long gap between posts! As mentioned, this fic will be updated sporadically, whenever I get enough crazy shenanigans written to make a chapter :)

People had told James that the only reason he’d lived this long was pure, dumb luck - usually, he’d contest that statement, but today it seemed like luck really was on their side.  For starters, Q was actually able to locate a planet, one with a trade colony, no less.

“How in the world do you recognize Scasla as a trade colony?  I somehow can’t imagine that the First Order is particularly big on teaching their Stormtroopers about the diversity of the universe,” Q asked, although he finally seemed to have reached the point where he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.  All of Bond’s answers thus far, after all, had been rather cringe-worthy.

This one, fortunately, was a bit more tame.  “No, but MI6 _is_ ,” James replied.  He’d managed to explain MI6, at least in the vaguest of terms: a group of rebels deep in the heart of the Order, led by a woman known as M, and interested in the survival of the Jedi (among other things).  Q had accepted that with only mild skepticism - apparently he’d had enough insanity in his life of late to allow him to suspend his disbelief for a bit.  James got a chance to go into more detail now, as he set their course to the planet of Rankatti, where the trade colony Scasla would hopefully provide them with a more serviceable ship, “And you know what the one benefit of uniformity is, in the First Order?  It means that everyone is nearly interchangeable.  So it’s very easy for MI6 to take young Stormtroopers out of their usual classes and train them in things like linguistics and geography.”

Q actually looked faintly impressed.  That prompted Bond to go on and awkwardly admit that from a young age he’d been taught to speak multiple languages and was probably more capable in combat than any five Stormtroopers (which really wasn’t that much to boast about when one realized that many, many trainees skipped classes, but most of them did it out of laziness, not because M was dragging them away to see tutors who wanted to teach them to speak Fyalkan).  

The next stroke of luck was Q himself: it turned out he could indeed fly a ship.  

“I get less airsick when I’m the one flying,” Q explained with clear embarrassment, after he convinced James to let him take over the pilot’s seat.  By this point, it seemed like they at least shared the same goal: regardless of whether Q really trusted James or not, they both wanted to get to Scasla before the _Regial_ broke down or was tracked down.  “And I don’t think that you’ve really messed up the basic flight controls so badly that I can’t make adjustments to the flight-plan that _I_ already set.”

It was true, Q had set their course; James wasn’t bad with maps, but his new companion seemed to be a natural with starcharts and course plotting.  “Knock yourself out,” James gave in without a fight, standing and stretching, “I need to change out of this Stormtrooper gear anyway.  The ship itself is going to draw enough attention without me looking like a First Order flunkey.”  Q made no comment, but one eyebrow twitched upwards as if there were perhaps still differing opinions on James’s ‘flunkey’ status.  ‘ _More subtle sass_ ,’ James identified the gesture, but was surprisingly uninsulted by it.  “Shout if you get locked out of the computer,” James called over his shoulder as he turned to raid the ship’s stores for something else to wear, “And if you get any ideas about locking me in the storage compartment, just remember that I can unlock any door just about as fast as you can lock it.”

As it turned out, Q didn’t start a one-man-mutiny to take over the ship.  James wasn’t able to find much by way of alternative clothing, but between what he already had on under the Stormtrooper armor and what little he found, he was able to return to the cockpit in a slightly less conspicuous fashion: black trousers, black pullover, tough grey boots.  When Q twisted to note his reappearance, he tensed at first, gave him an unexpectedly lingering once-over, then quickly turned back to the task of flying again.  “You still owe me a lot of explanation,” the Jedi said tersely, “because the more I hear, the harder it is to understand why the First Order tolerates your particular brand of reckless insanity.”

James just stared at the back of the Jedi’s head a minute, brows lowered.  Finally, he stated his conclusion, “You’re a mouthy little shit, aren’t you?”

“And you were more intimidating with your armor on,” the Jedi sniffed back, then continued with his demands, “Now explain.  Why didn’t the First Order find you out years ago - or just kick you out on account of you being insane?”  

When James walked over to lower himself with a huff into the copilot’s seat, Q watched him with lingering wariness, proof that despite his snark, the Jedi still remembered how recently the two of them had been locked in battle in the snow.  Deciding that antagonizing the young fellow probably wasn’t advisable (at least not while Q was flying the ship), James simply replied, “Believe it or not, it’s actually something of a selling point.”  Q glanced at him more fully now, disbelief clear in his quick green eyes, so James shrugged and just laid out the facts, “I’m not one-hundred-percent human.  I’m part Shezarand.”

Q just stared.  His mouth even dropped open a little bit.  

“Q, you’re steering, remember?” James offered helpfully, flicking a hand to indicate the viewport and the controls that needed frequent attention.  The Jedi’s mouth snapped shut and he jerked his gaze forward again, and his pale skin tone meant that his embarrassed flush was visible from his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears where they poked out past his ridiculous dark hair.  

After a moment of focusing on his chosen task, Q eventually responded, “Gods, that makes entirely too much sense.  It’s like everything's falling into place now.”

“I take it you’ve heard of the Shezarand then?”

“I’ve heard that full-blooded Shezarand are clairvoyant and slightly telepathic, but that if they interbreed, their mental gifts transform into impulsive suicidal tendencies,” Q stated bluntly, gaining him a look of impressed surprised from Bond.  The Jedi was well-informed.  “Most children of mixed Shezarandi blood end up jumping off a cliff or running into a burning building before they reach the age of ten.  How the devil did you survive this long?”

“I’m only one-fourth Sezarand at best,” James defended himself, although it was probably less than that - after all, his father was still living.  He squirmed a bit and felt compelled to admit, “And I wouldn’t call it suicidal so much as an increased awareness of danger… and a decreased awareness that going towards dangers is bad for one’s health.”

Q snorted, barely smothering a laugh as he kept his eyes focused on the viewport, which was presently awash with distant stars.  “In other words, you’re an adrenalin junky.”

“I prefer to think that I’m addicted to danger.  The First Order called me a ‘troubleseeker’.”

“Oh, well that sounds _much_ more suave,” Q returned, and it was clear by the quirk of his mouth and the tone of his voice that he was making fun, but James still felt the urge to chuckle.  More to the point, Q noted, “So you weren’t joking when you said that it was a genetic condition?”

Considering that that conversation had happened when Q was tied up, in pain, and still quite out of his mind with fear, James was shocked that the Jedi remembered that comment.  “Nope.  In fact, the First Order was aware of it, although my skills outweighed the fact that I was an ‘impure half-breed’.”  James made his sarcasm clear in the last words, reveling in how free it felt to finally express how much that angered him.  The lower growl that had entered James’s voice prompted Q to look at him out of the corner of one eye, but the Jedi didn’t comment.  “I’m capable of identifying the most dangerous entity on a battlefield and go towards it like metal shavings to a magnet, which can be useful when there’s, say, a hidden explosive in an enemy compound.”

“Or… a Jedi on the run?” Q guessed, intrigued despite himself, it seemed.  

“Precisely.”  Then, because he couldn’t help it, James stretched a leg out to toe at Q’s boot and add, “Although I think it was really just the lightsaber I was sensing.  Tell me, how did a half-trained Jedi like yourself end up all on your own on Nik’ah’tenia?”

Q made a little noise not unlike a hiss and a growl combined, moving his foot out of reach and glaring.  The Jedi’s half-cloak didn’t hide the way he straightened his shoulders, trying to appear more imperious than he was as he retorted loftily, “For you information, I wasn’t alone - at least, not until recently.  I was traveling with another Jedi.”

James grew interested.  “Were they on Nik’ah’tenia when the First Order attacked?”

At first, it looked like Q would clam up and not answer, but apparently his distrust of James wasn’t so great that he felt the need to hide this fact.  “No.  She’d made a trip off-world just a few days before.”  The Jedi didn’t elaborate, and as much as James itched for more information, he didn’t press.  Q’s lips had pressed together and some emotion was clawing behind his green eyes, showing James that this was a touchy subject - which was no surprise, really.  Q had probably been very dependent upon this other Jedi, and now he was alone, and his only consolation was that his teacher was probably safer than he was, wherever she was.  

James hoped that he’d be able to prove to Q that he was safe here, too, with James.  

So, the ex-Stormtrooper decided that it was time to give out more information.  Apropos of nothing, James stretched his legs out (not kicking Q this time) and crossed them at the ankles, saying, “I’ve actually known a Jedi before - back when I was a child.  The First Order came to my colony and destroyed it because they were hunting her.”  Although James was watching the stars outside the _Regial_ , he could see in his peripheral vision that he had Q’s attention now.  The blond-haired man went on steadily, “The only reason they let me live was because I got a head-injury in the attack, so they didn’t think I’d remember any _poisonous Jedi thoughts_.”  James shrugged, the memories old enough that they didn’t pack much of a sting anymore.  “I think the First Order also had faulty information, thinking that the Jedi had only been among us for a few days before they tracked her down - in reality, she’d been living in my neighbor’s house for almost a season, and I remember her pretty well.”  He remembered having a childhood crush on her, too, even though he’d been too young to really know what that meant at the time.  He drank in the memories for a moment, before remembering where he was, _what_ he was (or had been, until today), and finishing in a more vindictive tone,  “If nothing else, though, the First Order is good at believing its own stories, so it wasn’t hard to play along, and my head-injury really was pretty serious, at least for an eleven-year-old.  At first, I really didn’t remember much, but when I started recovering and recollecting things, it was easier to play along and not say anything, and the First Order was more than willing to accept that, too.”  

“Fuck,” Q breathed, very softly.  He sounded both horrified and a bit angry.  James looked over at him, a bit surprised by the fire in those green eyes.  “You were only _eleven_?”

“Child soldier,” James indicated himself, then lifted and dropped his shoulders again.  It was a well-known fact that the First Order took in children by the shipload, whether that was from Zygerrian slavers or from the wreckages of the very colonies they’d destroyed.  He didn’t think that it was a topic he needed to elaborate on.  “My files got a bit mixed up, so no one actually realized that I wasn’t a pure-blooded human until years later, but by then I’d proven valuable, so they kept me.”

It looked like Q’s foundations were being shaken a bit, and after staring at James for a moment longer, the Jedi forcefully tore his eyes away and went back to the task of steering the _Regial_.  It was fighting the helm a bit, and James wondered if he’d have to hack into the system again and beat it into submission.  Q handled it, however, after a few moments of furious button-poking and wrestling with the joystick.  The result was that the _Regial_ settled out and calmed under Q’s control.  

The result of Q wrestling with his thoughts about Bond was less clear.

~^~

Their luck held: they made it to Rankatti without getting caught or suffering a total system failure.  Q refused to give up the helm the whole way, which Bond accepted, because the more he saw of the Jedi’s flying skills, the more confident he was in them.  Perhaps Q was still getting the hang of the Force, but he seemed to know computers.  They didn’t talk much more, although Q finally asked whether James had any way to contact MI6 - at which point James had rather tersely explained that yes, he had, until Q had tried to cut off his arm.  Q had had the decency to look a bit regretful about that, although he pointedly hadn’t apologized, and the topic had been dropped.  

James used Q’s preoccupation to slip into the back of the ship again, looking for more clothes that fit him but also taking a moment to look at his arm.  Standing amidst the sparse racks of supplies (the _Regial_ wasn’t made to be away from home for long), James skinned off his black pullover, leaving him stripped from the waist up.  He immediately angled his arm, craning his neck to get the best look at his left bicep that he could.  To even a curious eye, James’s prosthetic arm looked identical to his real one, but now he had an ugly gash bisecting his outer arm and revealing the truth beneath.  The fake fleshcoat was burned back, revealing melted metal and circuitry, where Q’s damned saber had cut through sophisticated armor like it was butter, damaging the more delicate workings underneath.  It actually did hurt a bit, insofar as James could feel pain from the mechanical part of himself - his brain was getting repeated signals telling him that something was wrong, and if it wasn’t actually painful, it was most certainly irksome.

A faint scuff at the door had James turning, finding himself face-to-face with a certain green-eyed Jedi, leaning through the open portal with a caught-out look on his face.  Probably the reason he looked caught out was because his eyes had just finished a rather obvious once-over of James’s bare torso by the time James turned and noticed him.  Q’s eyes immediately snapped up to James’s eyes, of course, but by then the Jedi’s cheeks were pink.  

“I… ah… can’t help but notice the damage,” Q broke the silence awkwardly, flicking his eyes meaningfully to James’s arm while the ex-Stormtrooper just continued to stand where he was, half-naked and unabashed.  Q tripped his way through more words, “If you want, I could try my hand at fixing it.  I’ve got some training in the matter, and since I broke it, I figure I should… well… fix it.  I’d need to pick up the necessary tools, of course.”

If Q could be snarky, then James figured he could be slightly socially inappropriate, so instead of going for his pullover, he merely folded his arms across his bare chest.  “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises?  Does that mean you trust me now?”

Q’s eyes had wandered distractedly, but then returned to James’s playful blue gaze to assert sternly, “No, but the only way to verify your story is if you contact your people, and apparently your prosthetic is the only way to do that.”  He gestured vaguely at James’s damaged arm.  Or perhaps his corded forearms.  Or his pectoral muscles.  “So let’s just say I have a vested interest in the repairs.”

“Logical,” James commended, then leaned a shoulder up against one of the storage cabinets and added, “Besides just proving that I’m telling you the truth, getting my comm-link up and running again will give us access to inside information about the First Order and their movements.  M will be able to tell us if they’re still on our tail, or if they think that we were obliterated in that solar storm.”

“Or it’ll turn out that you were lying about everything, and no matter how I fix your arm, there will be no M or MI6,” Q countered in a surprisingly lackadaisical voice.  His continued mistrust made politely clear, the Jedi finally tore himself away from his half-nude companion and turned to head back to the cockpit.  

“Hey, Q,” James called him back, and was rewarded by a pair of wary green eyes angling back to him.  Not moving from his position, but copying Q’s previous, droll tone, “Even if I am lying about MI6, I’m still ex-First Order.  I have valuable information about them.”  Affecting nonchalance, James lifted and dropped one shoulder.  “Just keep that in mind if you’re planning on ditching me the moment we touch down.”

For a moment Q looked like he was perhaps going to say something biting; a tension had crept into his body, and it was clear that he didn’t like being cornered or manipulated, which James understood.  Who did?  However, after a moment, Q seemed to collect himself.  Instead of telling Bond to go fuck himself, all the Jedi said was, “If I ditch you, it’ll take me twice as long to find my lightsaber,” then turned around with a sort of finality that reminded Bond of a miffed feline.  

It made him smile despite himself.

~^~  

Scasla hung off the edge of a cliff, waters rushing under and past it in a way that made one wonder if it was held up but antigrav tech or pure luck.  The city itself spread back from the edge like a slowly spreading array of tree-roots, ultimately following the snaking line of the river.  Despite the source of water, there was very little green anywhere, save along the very edge of the river itself.  Wary of being noticed in a First Order ship, Bond and Q had landed a healthy distance away, where the earth was nothing but cracked, red earth.  

Q’s sat on the rim of part of the landing gear, re-wrapping the strips of cloth that wound from his soft boots up around his calves, meant to keep his trousers from getting in the way when he moved.  It took a bit of doing to hide the tear still remaining in his right trouser-leg, but at least the limb underneath didn’t hurt, his shoulder likewise.  Q almost wished that the pain had lingered, because it would make it easier to stay wary of the Stormtrooper moving around in front of him.  Bond had found a jacket, and after thoroughly rolling it in the dust, there was little chance that anyone would realize that it had once been pure white, First Order gear.  The rest of the man was reasonably smudged with rusty red by now, too, adding to the authenticity, even if Q’s eidetic memory could provide picture-perfect images of James Bond in Stormtrooper gear, lunging at him through the snow.  

 “For such an arid-looking place,” Q commented as the silence grew too much, “it’s remarkably cool here.”  He plucked at his cowl, but ultimately left it pooled around his shoulders.  

“I’m just glad that it’s not blisteringly hot, or I’d have a cooked Jedi on my hands,” the Stormtrooper replied in turn, gesturing briefly to Q’s attire, which was still unchanged from when they’d met.  

An errant breeze whistled in, rustling and tossing Q’s hair so that he had to push it back from his eyes, uncomfortable with letting the blond stormtrooper out of his sight for even a windy second.  “Very funny,” Q quipped even as he caught the pack James tossed him.  It was heavy enough that he nearly dropped it.  He understood why they wouldn’t be coming back to the ship - it was too distinctly First Order, and would be more of a liability than a boon - but they’d packed whatever they could carry from within.  Q had watched Bond like a hawk through the entire ship-gutting process, but still had one big question gnawing at his mind...  “If you left my lightsaber on the ship, I swear I’ll dig your eyes out with my thumbs,” he said frankly.  

“Don’t worry, I have it,” James admitted.  Instead of looking bothered by the threat, he smiled, reminding Q that the man had been born without a proper self-preservation instinct.  Still smirking, the older man hiked the straps of his own pack up over his shoulders, also checking that he could access his holsters.  If nothing else, _The_ _Regial’s_ armory had been well-stocked, although once again James had been forced to balance practicality with lethality: like the ship, some weapons screamed their origin, and that would cause trouble.  Q had watched the man practically mourn a rifle or two before leaving them on the ship.  “Come on,” James beckoned, apparently satisfied, “When we find a new ship, maybe we can get the seller to lower the price in return for scrapping _The Regial_.”

“Even though it’s First Order?” Q raised an eyebrow but stood, shouldering his allotted bag.  

“I’m hoping we can find someone suitably unscrupulous,” James replied with a small, Cheshire grin that said he rather liked the possibility.  

Huffing and looking away - wishing that he was good enough at this Jedi business to call for his saber - Q muttered under his breath, “You really are fucking insane.”

By the chuckle that drifted back to Q on the next breeze, the big blond bastard had heard him.  Flushing to his ears in embarrassment, Q scrambled to catch up with the man, who was moving with surety even though they couldn’t even see the city from here.  

It was a long trek, but one that was spent mostly in silence.  James looked content with it, and Q hadn’t the faintest idea what the man was thinking, but Q himself had a million thoughts whirling like a dust-storm in his head - and those were just the thoughts dedicated to the most immediate issue: resupplying and finding a ship.  Q wasn’t even sure how to start untangling any sort of future beyond that, because everything had spun so very totally out of control back on Nik’ah’tenia.  

The fierce ache he had for his companion sprang up and made Q’s breath catch, and that firmed his resolve to just think about the present for now - at least until it was confirmed whether or not Stormtrooper JB007 was really part of a pro-Jedi faction at the heart of the First Order.  

The two of them had actually talked and planned a bit, as they’d approached Rankatti.  Q himself was nervous about how they’d procure a ship, but didn’t want to admit that he had precious little funds; Jedi weren’t rich, especially ones that had been kidnapped/rescued with little more than one bag of their already meager belongings.  Fortunately, Bond had admitted quite freely that he had creds - if they could still access MI6.  Considering the man’s cringe-worthy manner of handling tech (and the number Q had done on the man’s biomechanical arm), it was a bit of a miracle that James actually managed to connect through to a blinddrop server, where (by another miracle) there was actually quite a large quantity of creds waiting for them.  The entire process was anonymous, and Bond had shrugged, slightly apologetic, “I can provide pretty deep pockets for this operation, but I still can’t prove to you that I’m MI6 yet.  Or that MI6 exists.”

Still, it was a step in the right direction.  Q himself had more knowledge of various cultures and species and peoples that they might meet on a trade colony like Scasla, so that, combined with Bond’s possibly-MI6-issued-funds, they could possibly make quite a good team.

Q gave his head a hard shake.  They weren’t a team.  Bond had kidnapped him and dislocated his arm, and there was still the possibility that James was making all of this up - to what end, though, Q couldn’t deduce.  

Furiously pondering, Q was distracted enough that he walked right into James’s pack.  “What the f-?” Q started to swear, cutting off and demanding, “Why did you stop?”  James was looking off ahead and to the right, but his expression was hard to describe… almost rapturous, actually, which was somehow worse than if the man had appeared scared.  Q followed his gaze, squinting as he noticed the first signs of civilization.  It looked like a domed hut off in the distance, with a few other outbuildings, maybe a vehicle, but behind the hut…  “Is that ship?”

“That,” James replied, “is a _fast_ ship.”

~^~

They got lucky.  The ship was for sale.  Apparently the reason it was for sale, however, was because its owner had lost an arm in an accident - and even though that still left three fully functional arms, that apparently wasn’t enough to safely pilot a Nebelung ship.  

Q had never heard of a Nebelung, but James clearly had.  The man had barely taken his eyes off the craft from the moment they’d walked up to the little collection of buildings, so they were lucky that Q had known the language of the Ceklin pilot (ex-pilot) who had come out suspiciously to greet them.  James had marveled at the ship while Q had tried to remember his Cekl dialects, and he still wasn’t sure what had gotten them into the ex-pilot’s good graces: Q’s manners and believable lies about just passing through and needing a ship, or James’s clear appreciation of the Ceklin’s old ship.  

“This is a terrible idea,” Q whispered, as the Ceklin opened the hatch on the ship’s underbelly.  The ship looked like a giant bird, or perhaps a tear-drop with wings, a slight bump on the back perhaps revealing a gunport.  It was the oddest-shaped ship Q had ever seen, and he didn’t know if he liked it.  

“I think it’s a _great_ idea,” Bond argued back with a stubborn folding of his arms, leaning a little closer - Q felt his warm breath waft across the shell of his era - “Do you know how many ships like this the First Order has ever managed to catch?   _One_.  At least to my knowledge.”  James straightened and continued to eye the ship, noting with approval, “The only reason we caught that one was because it had been recently stolen, and its new pilot didn’t know a fucking thing about how to fly it.”

“Bond, _we_ don’t know a fucking thing about how to fly it!” Q hissed with an angry gesture.

James just clapped him on the shoulder and approached as the Ceklin beckoned them forward with two of his three arms.  “I’m sure one of us will figure it out.  You look like a quick learner.”

Q was left sputtering as James strode forward and hauled himself up the open hatch-door (which was little more than a ladder, to Q’s further disapproval) and into the belly of the ship.  

Ceklins were a mix between avian and insectoid, and Q was never sure whether to describe their face as having a complicated beak or a simplified mandible, but either way, it was impossible to tell if the ship’s owner was smiling or not.  He and James seemed to be getting along swimmingly, though, despite the language barrier, and Q resigned himself to being ignored once the three of them were in the ship.  It was a snug fit, the ship definitely not designed for many passengers, but the presence of a gunner’s nest and a pilot’s seat - and a few more rooms hinted at behind closed doors - at least said that this was a ship meant for two.  Q wandered over to the pilot’s seat, which faced the ship’s entire, rounded nose: an open viewport that give a clear view of the desert beyond.  It was like being inside the curve of a glass marble.  The spires of Scasla were just visible in the distance.

A clicking, guttural voice behind him announced that the Ceklin hadn’t forgotten about Q.  The Jedi turned, finding the alien standing with his upper right arm idly rubbing the stump of his lower left - a man reminded of an old wound.  More clicks followed, a gentle buzz beneath them that Q was only able to mimic because of lots of practice.

James appeared, expression guardedly curious.  “What did he say?”

“He said,” Q repeated, slowly and in Commons, “That she can be flown easily, if you want to fly her slowly and badly.”  A low burr of noise, a vibrating rasp.  Q cocked his head, struggling a moment with the translation before the words unfolded and made sense.  “But that she doesn’t _like_ to be flown that way.”  There was another rasping snap of noise, and Q beetled his brows and translated automatically as he frowned up at the ship’s owner, “He wants me to try out the controls.”

At that point, Q expected a bit of argument; James obviously had machismo to spare, and usually that aligned itself with a sense of superiority, and the need to be in control.  In Q’s experience, men like that wanted to be the ones in the cockpit, but the blond-haired man just chuckled and leaned back against the far wall, giving in surprisingly swiftly, “Well, then give it a try.  How does that saying go?  ‘There's nothing holding you back but fear and common sense’?”

“I think that applies to you more than me,” Q grumbled, then spoke the Ceklin term for agreement and turned to approach the pilot’s seat.  There was no copilot's seat, he noted, and he looked back at the ship’s old pilot a bit uncertainly. According to James, Ceklins weren't even the species that had built these ships, so Q hoped this fellow knew what he was doing.

What followed was a whirlwind explanation of how one commanded - Q was pretty sure that the Ceklin was using the word for ‘commanded’ instead of ‘piloted’ - a Nebelung ship.  The reason that very few people flew them, and thus the reason that this one had been sitting on the property since its original owner’s accident, became immediately clear: Q had never seen a ship with so many moving parts.  The panel of dials and screens stretched a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc in front of the pilot’s chair, and it controlled everything from the thrusters to the ship’s wings - which were, apparently, designed like actual bird wings.  When Q tested them out, he was shocked by how responsive they were, but also by the fact that they were designed to move independently - thus complicating the system even more.  They could be linked, but clearly the pilot was meant to place one hand on each thigmotropic screen to the far left and far right of the control panel’s arc.  Those screens were incredibly sensitive, but even as Q pressed his hands into them - feeling the suede-like surface press back - Q found himself growing entranced by the pure feats of engineering that had gone into this.  He couldn't read a word of the original language that this was written in, but already his eyes were beginning to devour the symbols, noting patterns, memorizing.  He saw that he was meant to sync the wings whenever he wanted to free up a hand to do anything else, but theoretically, once the rest of the ship was moving, he could control the ship almost entirely just by getting a handle on how the wings extended, flexed, and angled-

The Ceklin was saying something.  Q tore himself away from his study to blink owlishly up at the dark, parrot-like eyes above him.  “What did you say?”

Despite the fact that Q had spoken unthinkingly in Common, the message apparently came across, because the Ceklin inhaled, exhaled, and then said in a slow, even measure, in his own tongue, “ _Your friend went for supplies, and instructed that you stay here.  He shall return_.”

Unsure what it meant that Bond was leaving him in the belly of a ship that Q had purported to hate with an alien that they’d only just met, Q sat uneasily for a moment… before the ship’s owner began to point out that the ship’s rearward engines were designed to act like a ‘tail,’ and therefore were movable.  Apparently this was where the Ceklin had required four arms to fly the thing, but Q dove into the details like an asteroid making entry, and he forgot that Bond had even left him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for the Nebelung ship came from here: https://marcsimonetti.deviantart.com/art/Corpse-in-the-desert-647584782?src=MC_deviation_stack. 
> 
> I get a lot of random alien and ship ideas via Pinterest, so I'll apologize ahead of time for the use of outside work - I'll give credit whenever possible, and will never claim them as my own. Any pictures posted later are purely for reference.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got about half of the next chapter already written, so _hopefully_ Ch 2 will at least be posted in a decently swift amount of time - and you can properly meet Q in all of his snarky glory...
> 
> By the way, this fic all started with this doodle that I did:


End file.
